The Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has accused former President Donald Trump of being “our own American war criminal” over his actions during the coronavirus pandemic and the January 6 Capitol riot.
Speaking with CNN’s Brian Stelter, Bernstein said: “I think we need to calmly step back and maybe look at Trump in a different context: He is America’s, our own American war criminal. Of a kind we’ve never experienced before.”
Stelter interrupted Bernstein, saying: “You just said war criminal. What do you mean war criminal?” Continue reading.
Audio of the president trying to persuade a Georgia official to change election results is “the ultimate smoking gun tape,” the Watergate journalist said.
The leaked tapes of Donald Trump trying to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the president’s election defeat are “far worse” than what occurred in the Watergate scandal, journalist Carl Bernstein said Sunday.
Bernstein, whose reporting of the 1972 political scandal led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, said the bombshell tapes of Trump were evidence of an attempted coup.
“It’s not déjà vu. This was something far worse than occurred in Watergate,” Bernstein told CNN. “We have both a criminal president of the United States in Donald Trump and a subversive president of the United States at the same time in this one person.” Continue reading.
The CNN political analyst listed the threats looming after the president announced he had contracted the coronavirus.
Carl Bernstein said early Friday that the United States is “in the midst of a national security crisis” following President Donald Trump’s COVID-19diagnosis. The CNN political analyst listed several threats that could intensify, including Russian exploitation, cyber-manipulation of the markets and domestic unrest.
“This is DEFCON 1 in terms of the health of the people in the United States, in terms of our political health, in terms of our stability,” he toldCNN host Don Lemon.
Trump tweeted overnight that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus, after confirmation that White House aide Hope Hicks had tested positive. Continue reading.
The following article by Elizabeth Preza was posted on the AlterNet website July 29, 2018:
“[Keeping the base] energized against the press is absolutely essential to Donald Trump fighting and furthering the cover-up.”
Carl Bernstein
Legendary Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein on Sunday laid out Donald Trump’s “demonstrable” cover-up, telling CNN’s Brian Stelter that the president wants the media’s “credibility destroyed because we are reporting the truth.”
Bernstein on Friday reported Cohen’s claim that Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Russian nationals offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Per the CNN report, Cohen is willing to “make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller.”
Speaking with Stelter on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Bernstein compared the Russia investigation to Watergate, explaining that he and his reporters are “making judgements about what is news” while those in power attempt to discredit the sources.
The following article by Chris Sosa was posted on the AlterNet website December 4, 2017:
The president isn’t even trying to mask his authoritarian impulses.
Veteran reporter Carl Bernstein, best known for his journalism during President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that President Donald Trump’s “authoritarian” behavior is more blatant than Nixon’s abuse of power.
“Richard Nixon is a criminal president who abused his authority in secret throughout his presidency and had to leave office because of it,” Bernstein explained. “Donald Trump, by contrast, is a president of the United States who has claimed authoritarian powers for himself and exercised them not in secret but openly, and now because of that it looks like he may well have obstructed justice, among other possibily illegal acts.”
Trump’s behavior is arguably worse than Nixon’s before the former president fired the special prosecutor, an example Trump may choose to follow as the Russia investigation inches further into his inner circle.
“The conduct of Donald Trump in office as we’ve seen it publicly is much more egregious than we publicly saw Nixon’s conduct certainly up to the time that he fired the special prosecutor in the Saturday Night Massacre,” Bernstein said.
The following article by Ilana Bernstein and Josiah Ryan was posted on the CNN website July 1, 2017:
Carl Bernstein
Journalism legend Carl Bernstein called on the US press Friday to rise to the challenge of the Donald Trump presidency, which he characterized as “malignant.”
“We’re in foreign territory,” Bernstein said, speaking on CNN’s “New Day.” “We have never been in a malignant presidency like this before. It calls on our leaders, it calls on our journalists to do a different kind of reporting, a different kind of dealing with this presidency and the President.”
Bernstein went on to argue that the Trump presidency’s deepest problems are becoming an open secret in Washington.
“I think something much greater is happening, and that is that we are in the midst of a malignant presidency,” he said. “That malignancy is known to the military leaders of the country. It’s known to the Republican leadership in Congress who recognize it, and it’s known to the intelligence community.”
The following e-newsletter by Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post was mailed February 21, 2017:
THE TAKEAWAY
President Trump’s speech over the weekend along Florida’s Space Coast — effectively a campaign rally staged just one month into his term — served, more than anything else, as an illustration of the extent of the political polarization now gripping the United States.
Trump had already declared open war on his country’s media, describing the mainstream press as the “enemy” of the American people. The 9,000-strong crowd of supporters seemed to agree.Continue reading “The Trump presidency exists in a bubble”
